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How Do You Stop Osteoarthritis From Spreading?

Osteoarthritis is a common type of arthritis that affects approximately millions of people across the world. This takes place whenever the protective cartilage cushioning the bones ends wear down with time. Even though osteoarthritis may cause damage to almost every joint, the disorder mainly affects the joints in your knees, spine, hands, and hips. You may easily manage the osteoarthritis symptoms even though damages caused to joints are irreversible. In this situation, you should stay physically active, maintain a healthy weight, and follow certain treatments to slow the progression of your disease, while improving your joint functions and pain.

How Do You Stop Osteoarthritis From Spreading?

Stopping The Spread Of Osteoarthritis Depends On Certain Lifestyle Changes

You should make certain lifestyle changes to stop the spread of your osteoarthritis or avoid osteoarthritis-related complications. These include the following-

Low-Intensive Exercises: Low-intensive exercises may improve the overall health of your joints. Hence, you should always look for physical activities, which consist of stretching and strength training combined with aerobic exercise. Regular exercise may help you in preventing or slowing down your osteoarthritis symptoms. Moreover, exercise may help you by relieving your stiffness and pain, reduce fatigue, maintain healthy joints, and increase both bone and muscular strength.

Management Of Occupational Risks: Jobs involving repetitive motions may be hard on the joints. In this situation, you should communicate with your doctor to discuss different ways to manage or reduce your risks related to osteoarthritis. Especially, you should stay aware of your job involves lifting, kneeling, walking, and twisting activities frequently.

Lose Weight If You Are An Obese: Excess weight is a major risk factor associated with osteoarthritis. Additional body weight places extra stress on the joints, which increases the risk related to joint cartilage deterioration. Losing excessive body weight may help you in reducing your pain and improving the underlying osteoarthritis symptoms.

Maintain Balance Between Rest And Exercise: Even though exercise is helpful in the development of healthy muscles and joints, the overuse of joints may sometimes increase your risk related to the development of osteoarthritis. You have to maintain a balance between rest and exercise. If you have achy or swollen joints, you should take a break. Accordingly, you should avoid using your swelling joints for about 12 hours to 24 hours. When you allow healing of your injured joints, it reduces the risk related to developing osteoarthritis shortly. Moreover, if you suffer from osteoarthritis, fatigue may increase your pain. Hence, you should make sure to take enough sleep during the nighttime.

Control Your Blood Sugar Levels: High blood sugar levels or diabetes increases your risk related to the development of osteoarthritis. This is because; when your blood glucose level is high, it speeds the formation of various molecules, which force in the shift of cartilage. Also, diabetes may trigger inflammation to accelerate cartilage loss. When you keep your diabetes under control, you may regulate the glucose levels to avoid osteoarthritis.(1)

Symptoms Of Osteoarthritis

Symptoms associated with osteoarthritis may develop at a slow rate and become worse with time. Common signs and symptoms related to osteoarthritis include the following-

  • Affected joints may suffer pain and injury while they do a movement or after movement.
  • Joint stiffness is noticeable while a person wakes up or stays inactive for a long time.
  • Your joints will feel tender even when you apply light pressure towards or surrounding it.
  • You may suffer flexibility loss i.e. unable to move the joints through the complete range of motion.
  • You may feel a grating type of sensation at the time of using joints, while you may hear crackling or popping sounds.
  • Bone spurs refer to additional bone bits, which appear as hard lumps to form across the affected joints.
  • Swelling related to osteoarthritis may take place because of the inflammation of soft tissues across the joint.(2)

Conclusion

Therefore, by following certain precautionary steps, you will expect to manage your pain, inflammation, and other symptoms related to osteoarthritis.

References:

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Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:May 21, 2020

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